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The growth of European wind and solar power capacity is associated with increasing electricity curtailment to manage excess generation and ensure safe network operations. Instead, this surplus electricity could be used to produce hydrogen, thereby reducing the need for fossil-fueled hydrogen production in ammonia and refining industries. Based on historical data, we estimate the potential for surplus electricity from wind and solar power for 27 countries across Europe. Following an optimization-based approach, we determine the cost-optimal design and operation of a system producing hydrogen from surplus electricity, including the option of battery and hydrogen storage. Two potential applications are analyzed: (1) a fuel-saving scenario, where electrolytic hydrogen substitutes fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen, whenever surplus electricity is available, and (2) a fuel-replacing scenario, where hydrogen from surplus electricity fully replaces a subset of fossil-fueled hydrogen production facilities. Our findings suggest that hydrogen from surplus electricity could substitute 30% (1.9 Mt H2 /y) of fossil hydrogen, reducing ammonia and refinery emissions by 18% (20 Mt CO2 /y). However, fully replacing fossil-fueled hydrogen production facilities increases hydrogen production costs substantially as it requires costly battery and/or hydrogen storage capacity to balance hydrogen production and supply. Nonetheless, about 19% (1.2 Mt H2 /y) of the fossil-fueled hydrogen production could be replaced cost-effectively.

A stylized macro-scale energy model of least-cost electricity systems relying only on wind and solar generation was used to assess the value of different storage technologies, individually and combined, for the contiguous U.S. as well as for four geographically diverse U.S. load-balancing regions. For the contiguous U.S. system, at current costs, when only one storage technology was deployed, hydrogen energy storage produced the lowest system costs, due to its energy-capacity costs being the lowest of all storage technologies modeled. Additional hypothetical storage technologies were more cost-competitive than hydrogen (long-duration storage) only at very low energy-capacity costs, but they were more cost-competitive than Li-ion batteries (short-duration storage) at relatively high energy- and power-capacity costs. In all load-balancing regions investigated, the least-cost systems that included long-duration storage had sufficient energy and power capacity to also meet short-duration energy and power storage needs, so that the addition of short-duration storage as a second storage technology did not markedly reduce total system costs. Thus, in electricity systems that rely on wind and solar generation, contingent on social and geographic constraints, long-duration storage may cost-effectively provide the services that would otherwise be provided by shorter-duration storage technologies.

We employed an idealized macro-energy system model to examine how the value of unidirectionally- and bidirectionally-charging electric vehicles (EVs) varies with EV penetration and mix of electricity generators. We find that EVs can help wind and solar-based electricity generation systems to be less costly by making better use of power that would otherwise be curtailed and, potentially, by giving electricity back to the grid at times of peak net load. At low levels of EV penetration, bidirectional EVs are valuable because they can provide electricity at times of main load peak. At today's low levels of EV penetration, bidirectional EVs stimulate investments in solar and wind generation and substantially reduce the need for grid-battery storage compared to unidirectional EVs. At high levels of EV penetration, generation capacity must be increased, and most peaks in main net load demand can be met by reductions in charging by unidirectional EVs., (© 2022 The Author(s).)

Wind and solar photovoltaic generators are projected to play important roles in achieving a net-zero-carbon electricity system that meets current and future energy needs. Here, we show potential advantages of long-term site planning of wind and solar power plants in deeply decarbonized electricity systems using a macro-scale energy model. With weak carbon emission constraints and substantial amounts of flexible electricity sources on the grid (e.g., dispatchable power), relatively high value is placed on sites with high capacity factors because the added wind or solar capacity can efficiently substitute for running natural gas power plants. With strict carbon emission constraints, relatively high value is placed on sites with high correlation with residual demand because resource complementarity can efficiently compensate for lower system flexibility. Our results suggest that decisions regarding long-term wind and solar farm siting may benefit from consideration of the spatial and temporal evolution of mismatches in electricity demand and generation capacity., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2022 The Author(s).)

Solar photovoltaics, with sufficient power generation potential, low-carbon footprint, and rapidly declining costs, could supplant fossil fuels and help produce lower-cost net-zero emissions energy systems. Here we used an idealized linear optimization model, including free lossless transmission, to study the response of electricity systems to increasing prescribed amounts of solar power. Our results show that there are initially great benefits when providing solar power to the system, especially under deep decarbonization scenarios. The marginal value of additional solar power decreases substantially with increasing cumulative solar capacities. At costs near today's levels, the modeled zero-emission electricity system with free solar generation equaling twice the annual mean demand is more costly than a carbon-emitting natural-gas-based system supplying the same electricity demand with no solar. Taking full advantage of low-cost solar will depend on developing and deploying low-cost approaches to temporally shift either energy supply (e.g., storage) or electricity loads (e.g., load-shifting)., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2022 The Author(s).)

We employed a bottom-up modeling framework to examine a set of scenarios to generate insights on the techno-economic and environmental implications of increasing levels of electric vehicle (EV) penetration using Nigeria as a case study. Results indicate that, despite Nigeria having a natural gas-dominated electricity system, the deployment of EVs can support the decarbonization of the transportation and power sectors but at a relatively high cost. The cost of EVs would need to drop by ∼40% to become cost-competitive. However, if variable renewable energy sources deliver the EVs power requirement with a bidirectional vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging strategy, then the cost of EVs would need to decline by only ∼30%. Not all EVs need to participate in a V2G charging strategy in order to realize the full benefits of the strategy. Expanding renewables capacity leads to additional reduction in CO 2 emission and decarbonization cost but at different magnitudes based on the charging strategy., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2022 The Authors.)

As reliance on wind and solar power for electricity generation increases, so does the importance of understanding how variability in these resources affects the feasible, cost-effective ways of supplying energy services. We use hourly weather data over multiple decades and historical electricity demand data to analyze the gaps between wind and solar supply and electricity demand for California (CA) and the Western Interconnect (WECC). We quantify the occurrence of resource droughts when the daily power from each resource was less than half of the 39-year daily mean for that day of the year. Averaged over 39 years, CA experienced 6.6 days of solar and 48 days of wind drought per year, compared to 0.41 and 19 for WECC. Using a macro-scale electricity model, we evaluate the potential for both long-term storage and more geographically diverse generation resources to minimize system costs. For wind-solar-battery electricity systems, meeting California demand with WECC generation resources reduces the cost by 9% compared to constraining resources entirely to California. Adding long-duration storage lowers system costs by 21% when treating California as an island. This data-driven analysis quantifies rare weather-related events and provides an understanding that can be used to inform stakeholders in future electricity systems.

Electricity usage (demand) data are used by utilities, governments, and academics to model electric grids for a variety of planning (e.g., capacity expansion and system operation) purposes. The U.S. Energy Information Administration collects hourly demand data from all balancing authorities (BAs) in the contiguous United States. As of September 2019, we find 2.2% of the demand data in their database are missing. Additionally, 0.5% of reported quantities are either negative values or are otherwise identified as outliers. With the goal of attaining non-missing, continuous, and physically plausible demand data to facilitate analysis, we developed a screening process to identify anomalous values. We then applied a Multiple Imputation by Chained Equations (MICE) technique to impute replacements for missing and anomalous values. We conduct cross-validation on the MICE technique by marking subsets of plausible data as missing, and using the remaining data to predict this "missing" data. The mean absolute percentage error of imputed values is 3.5% across all BAs. The cleaned data are published and available open access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3690240.